A Gay Singaporean Man's Journey towards Self Discovery & Self Love

PM Lee and Acceptance of Same-Sex Relations in Singapore

At the Singapore Perspectives 2013 conference, “PM Lee was asked by a participant how the fact that the Republic is a secular country reconciles with “an old and archaic law that nearly discriminates against a whole (group) of people”.”

Mr Lee had also said that, “These are not issues that we can settle one way or the other, and it’s really best for us just to leave them be, and just agree to disagree. I think that’s the way Singapore will be for a long time.” He added that the “conservative roots” in society do not want to see the social landscape change.”

Let us to track the progress of the acceptance of gay rights in Singapore.

If you look at this article, there are about 35% to 40% of Singaporeans who are economically-conservative. There are also about 35% to 40% of Singaporeans who are not economically-conservative.

If you look at the trend of gay rights in America, you can see that since 2011, the majority of Americans believe that there same-sex marriages should be made valid (chart below). You can see that over the years, more and more Americans have become more favourable towards the acceptance of same-sex rights.

In America, the support for same-sex marriage along political lines is as follows:

Now, the political divisions in Singapore are actually very similar to that of America. If we extrapolate the statistics, below is what you will get:

Group

% Representation

% Support

% Not Support

Aligned to PAP (‘Conservative’)

37.5%

22%

74%

Not aligned to PAP (‘Dynamic’)

37.5%

65%

34%

Others

25%

57%

40%

According to the proportionate representation and their corresponding expected support for same-sex rights, the support for same-sex rights in Singapore would be 46.88% and those who do not support stand at 50.5%.

According to a study conducted in 2010 by NTU which was published in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology last month, where they stated that, “with regard to acceptance of homosexuals, 44.9% of respondents found them unacceptable, 14.7% were neutral, and 40.4% were accepting.” According to the study, “there is no majority view on acceptance of homosexuals. Nearly as many people say they can accept as say they cannot, and a sizable portion (nearly 15%) say they are neutral on the issue.”

The study also indicated that, “the results indicate that, overall, the attitudes of Singaporeans was less negative in 2010 than ﬁve years previously.” From 2005 to 2010, there was a decrease in negative attitudes by 4%.

If you also extrapolate this upon the extrapolation on the accepting attitudes of Singaporeans based on the Gallup survey, there will be 50.88% of Singaporeans who will support same-sex rights, and 46.5% who will not, which means in the near term future, a majority of Singaporeans will be accepting of same-sex rights.

If you extrapolate this upon the NTU survey, you can chart the accepting attitudes towards same-sex rights in the chart below:

When the survey is conducted again in 2015, you can expect that a majority of Singaporeans will be accepting towards same-sex relations. In fact, if you take the point where 2013, you will already see that a majority of Singaporeans should already be in fact, accepting of same-sex rights.